Re: can I construct references in this way?

This is related to reflection (even though class Class is not part of the reflection package). It is somewhat advanced but it will let you do what you want. Here is an example without all the proper Exception management. Assuming six classes named as you described above.

However, there are a number of problems here. For one, if your classes don't implement a common interface you will have to check each entry in the object array to do a proper cast to access anything in the classes. This can be very cumbersome. I would suggest you re-evaluate your design.